What Crack is like
THE BANKER
Hal W. is a 40-year-old investment banker, the oldest son from a Southern Baptist farm family, who experienced his first drug high in high school when he took the keys to his grandfather's pharmacy and "borrowed" some amphetamines.
"I'd take the amphetamines to study, and smoke marijuana to come down", said the banker, who like other addicts spoke on condition that his full name not be used. "I drank, like my parents. But I thought I wasn't addicted to anything, because I knew I could quit anytime."
In college, a friend introduced him to snorting cocaine. "It made me feel fabulous, and then very sick," he said. "But I would remember the fabulous and forget the sick, and I'd run out and buy more and more and more. and I'd use it pretty much every day."
Hal first tried crack about five years ago, but because he did not buy his own pipe and cooking paraphernalia he knew he could not be addicted. When his dealer was arrested for shooting a drug supplier, Hal posted the $10,000 bond. "I thought it was out of the goodness of my hears," he recalled.
Dealer's Role Looms Large
"You need to understand how the dealer becomes the most important person in a user's life," Hal said. "I gave him the key to my apartment. He had access to my bank account so I could phone from the airport and he'd send a car with a package of crack or he'd deliver it to my apartment at any hour just like a pizza."
He said the dealer was despicable. "But I didn't care. Even when I found out he was skimming thousands extra out of my account, you can bet I found another dealer before I confronted him." The new dealer was the friend of a friend, a graduate in Chinese studies at Harvard and Columbia.
In office meetings colleagues would wink and excuse themselves to go snort cocaine. Hal found himself spending days at a time by himself or with a prominent lawyer friend smoking, crack, drinking and watching pornographic movies. "I can't ell you how high crack made me feel," he said, "or how frightened of the low I was. I'd smoke even when my left arm went numb and I got severe chest pains. I'd tell myself it was because I was sitting in a funny position."
He lost his girlfriend, who did not use drugs. He was dismissed from his $300,000-a-year job. He borrowed from friends and banks. He bounced checks. "I was miserable," he said, "but I didn't know what to do about it. And I was so afraid of losing crack."
Last fall a friend who had quit crack steered him to a psychiatric hospital. But after two days Hal checked himself out. Within 48 hours of nonstop smoking he had consumed $5000 in crack, barely one percent of the money Hal estimates he spent on drugs in recent years.
He then threw away all his drugs and began serious treatment. "Last Nov. 5 was the first day of the rest of my life," he said. His doctor says he has tested clean ever since.
Walking by an airport pay phone can still trigger a craving. "But I'm determined that hell is over for me," he said.
As a first step in reconciliation with his family, Hal confided his addiction to an uncle, a psychiatrist who treats many addicts. The uncle then shared a confidence of his own with Hal.
He was, and still is, a crack addict.
THE HOMEMAKER
It was during one of the many arguments with her husband that Mary G. suddenly realized what she had done.
He was loudly complaining about the messy apartment and lack of dinner again when their 4-year-old daughter rose to her mother's defense.
"Daddy, Daddy, Mommy's O,K. as long as she has her pipe."
Mary, now 37 years old, was first offered marijuana by her older brothers, both now alcoholics, when she was 12.
She introduced her high school friends to marijuana and they would smoke and drive and drink some beer in the basement, depending on whose parents were not home that evening.
She Was Addicted 'Immediately'
Mary first tried pills in San Francisco, where friends regularly snorted cocaine. She snorted now and then, too. Slowly it became more now than then.
In the early 1980's a friend began smoking cocaine and Mary tried that just to be social. "Immediately and unequivocally I was addicted," she recalled.
When she became pregnant, she said she quit just as abruptly. And her husband, who manages a financial firm, stopped snorting, too. But as soon as Mary's daughter was weaned, Mary returned to crack. "I said, 'Hey, I can handle this.'"
But once a week became twice a week and then three and four times. Mary would drop her daughter off at nursery school, go to a friend's apartment, smoke crack all day and pick her daughter up at 5:30. "I told myself it was O.K. as long as I didn't take crack home," Mary said.
"I'd make dinner, give my daughter a bath, read her stories and put her to bed. Then when my husband fell asleep, I'd go to a cash machine, get some money and find a street dealer so I could smoke in my bathroom."
'I Was So Disgusting'
Mary became so eager to reach her friend's apartment and begin smoking crack that she would not bother to stop and leave her daughter at the school but would instead take her along. "She saw me crawling around on that floor looking for little pieces of crack, as if it was gold," Mary said. "I could have given up my husband, my daughter, my whole life and crawled into that pipe, I was so disgusting."
She began treatment several times, often ending a day of counseling by heading straight for her friend's apartment to smoke crack.
One day at a restaurant, after having several drinks at lunch, Mary blacked out. She awoke in a private hospital where no one said anything about drugs or alcohol. "We in the middle class can get away with so much more," she said. "We're not robbing stores. We just steal from ourselves and our families."
Her daughter's innocent remark about her pipe only eight months into crack addiction pushed her into treatment, which began with a two-week stay at a private hospital in another state. She slipped and smoked crack one day after her return home. But she says she has not smoked in 159 days and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost every day.
"It's a long road," she said. "But I feel better about myself. I'm a good person who had a bad problem. Crack is on the street. But it's not just a street drug."
THE ASSEMBLY LINE WORKER
For 23 years Fred T. was the man of the family, the oldest of three children of a registered nurse. His father died in Vietnam. "I think he was in the Marines," Fred said.
His mother died of cancer at 46. But Fred had a good job on a Michigan automotive assembly line earning about $32,00 a year. He worked hard and saved his money, including a modest trust fund left by grandparents.
He had seen many colleagues snort cocaine during and after work; one guy on the line was the dealer for office executives, too. His friends told him how good it felt. And one day Fred became curious. He remembers how it felt to be outside himself, free of responsibilities.
"I didn't know where I was," he said. "But I was just watching me wander around. It was so easy."
The next week Fred was curious again. And again. And soon he was smoking crack for the faster high and drinking a lot to ease the crash.
With $1,500 a week going up in cocaine smoke, the trust fund did not last long. He was bringing home less money for his wife and daughter. He took out some loans against his house. And for a while other family members gave him money.
"But then I became an outcast," he said. "They never knew who was at the door, the real Fred or the stranger who looked like him."
His wife and daughter left. he lost the house. And at least two efforts at rehabilitation failed.
"There's a madness out there," said Fred. "There are crack smokers sitting in offices making decisions and guys working on the line and running machines. And they don't believe they have a problem. It takes so long to learn. It's like blind men trying to lead blind men. They can't. So if you're blind, you better get yourself a dog."